Abstract
Suction Embedded Plate Anchor (SEPLA) is an attractive deep water mooring system due to advantages in terms of low cost, accurate positioning, short installation time and high efficiency. After being pushed into the seabed by the suction follower, theSEPLAwill be pulled and rotated to the direction perpendicular to the load direction to achieve the maximum capacity in a process known as “keying”. The SEPLA will move upwards during the keying process and this results a reduction in embedment depth. This loss of embedment leads to a reduction in ultimate capacity particularly in a normally consolidated soil profile. In this study, the three-dimensional Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) finite element technique is applied to simulate the keying process of a SEPLA. The results are first verified against existing centrifuge experiments.A series of parametric studies was carried out to investigate the influence of anchor shank, soil remolding and loading inclination on the loss of embedment. It was found that the anchor shank play a key role in reducing the loss of embedment. The maximum loss of embedment reduces with reducing pullout angle but the load inclination angle has minimal effect on the anchor short-term ultimate capacity.